Austin, TX – The 2013 SXSW conference saw the debut of a new Hater app, which encourages its users to unleash their inner hate monger.
According to Mashable, the Hater app is made for users to “share their grievances rather than post about all their favorite things.”
Instead of hitting “Like” on posts and pictures from your friends, you “Hate” them instead, bonding over common complaints like bad weather, duck face, and other “FML” moments.
The Hater app works kind of like Instagram where users have a feed on which they can share text “rants,” upload or take pictures of frustrating things, and tag followers. “Most hated” items pop up at the top of popular lists, providing a real-time news feed of the things people are hating on today.
The question is, does the Hater app encourage cyber bullying?
“Online bullying occurs on every social network, regardless of the theme of each app,” project manager Holly Dietrich said. “Hater has methods for reporting any inappropriate posts, and we thing the app can actually have positive results from all the hate.”
She also added that despite the app’s focus on “hate,” the team is hoping that the project will inspire people to band together and work for social good by “hating” things we all want to see gone like war, poverty, gun violence, and duck face.
Hater is now available on the iOS App Store. The company hopes to expand to other platforms, but has no current plans to do so.
I don’t take issue with the Hater app so much as I do with the reporting I’ve been seeing on it. How are we, as social media experts, not pointing out that Hater really only facilitates something everyone already does on social media on a daily basis?
Hello, I’m the Internet. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Have we met? I’m full of bullying, hatred and vitriol. My racism, misogyny and homophobia show up on Facebook feeds, on Twitter trends, Instagram pics, and Tumblr pages constantly, and I work double-time during election season.
Social media is a wonderful thing, but it’s not just posting about all your favorite things. For every mundane photo of chicken parmesan, there are two posts complaining about how Obummer is ruining the country. Sure, Hater has a “hate” button, but users have been begging for a “dislike” function on Facebook for years.
Now, I understand that Hater is just trying to be fun and charmingly self-aware of Internet hate, and that’s just fine. The Hater app is a fun novelty, but my only question is this: Is it a bit redundant?
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